


Sister Grimm

by AllyAllyOxenFree



Category: Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell, Simon Snow series - Gemma T. Leslie
Genre: F/F, Family Drama, Family Fluff, Future Fic, M/M, Siblings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-07-26 02:03:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7555849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllyAllyOxenFree/pseuds/AllyAllyOxenFree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eight years after the events in Carry On, Baz's little sister is dealing with the usual Watford shenanigans, not to mention relationship problems and living in the shadow of the World's Most Perfect Vampire and his superhero boyfriend.<br/>Also, Penny plays matchmaker and Baz gets drunk a lot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Mordelia 

There’s nothing better than watching a bunch of drunk magicians play croquet. Well, nothing better than being one of the drunken magicians. Or being sober, alone. Father has forbidden me from drinking because he says he can’t trust my judgment after the latest incident at Watford. I can’t even slip sips of my brother’s drink behind his back because Father is one of those men who is never, ever, truly drunk. Baz thinks he can drink like father, but he’s slowly getting sloshed. He’s already enchanted the mallets of at least two opponents. The bad sportsmanship isn’t such a surprise, but he would normally be far subtler.  
One of his victims tosses down his mallet in defeat and ambles over to me.  
“Hey, Delia,” says Simon sitting down. “Why aren’t you playing?”  
“Croquet is boring sober.”  
“I thought the Grimms and Pitches had a rule about always being drunk at family gatherings. Or so Baz told me.”  
“I was kicked off of the football team. This is part of my punishment.”  
“What’d you do?”  
“I was brewing fairy wine in my dorm room. They caught me because the rats started getting drunk.”  
Simon snorts. “Queen of the Watford black market, are you?”  
“Oh yes. The trick is to use at least three types of rose petals.”  
“I’ve got to try some.”  
“Are you coming home with Baz this week?” I ask hopefully. Simon brings energy with him unlike anyone I’ve ever met, Normal or Magic. “They didn’t find all my stashes, I can give you a couple bottles.”  
“Yeah, we’re spending a few nights.”  
Simon begins to tug on his tie. It’s bloody warm for April and he looks uncomfortable in his nice outfit. My neck is sweating under my braided hair and the high collar of my tea dress. I don’t lift a hand to scratch at it, even though the temptation is there. I know the moment I break composure, Baz or Mother or Father will turn around and raise a single eyebrow. One eyebrow is all it takes.  
Sit like a lady.  
Put on a skirt.  
Come on Mordelia, just smile for the camera.  
What in eight seas happened to your stockings?  
It’s easier to pretend that I just don’t itch.

I sit in the heat with Simon, nibbling at scones while he gobbles them, for another hour until everyone is ready to pile into the car to go home. Baz and Father have a swift, silent stare-down over who will drive, stopped by Simon putting his on Baz’s elbow and guiding him into the backseat.  
Watching my brother come home is like watching a photograph develop in reverse. In London, with Simon, he’s all black and white, crisp edges and pearly fanged smiles. Even at the Wellbelove’s garden party he was happy and charming, not letting on how much the sun bothered him. He begins to fade in the car ride home. He makes polite conversation with Mother about his work (legal help for magicians, for the most part), and rubs his thumb on the back of Simon’s fingers. Father cuts him a glance, and he grips Simon’s hand without a break in the conversation. It’s a gesture of resistance, not affection.  
Our house turns everything into grayscale, but it’s the worst for him. Victorian drapes cover leaded windows that barely filter in any weak English sun. I grew up without knowing that carpets would come in vivid colors. Simon is the only one who isn’t completely washed out. He always seems to attract an unfair amount of sunlight, like the plant with the greenest leaves. No wonder Baz, in danger of fading away in the living room, clings to him.  
“What are you staring at?” demands Baz, catching sight of me. “Get out of the shadows and change before dinner, you little creep.”  
His eyesight is still brilliant, even without color.

I don’t like dressing for dinner. Food doesn’t deserve fancy outfits, unless it’s something stain-resistant to cook in. We usually only bother for special occasions. In this case, I suppose it’s the Welcoming of Basilton and the Scolding of Mordelia.  
“So Delia, how’s Watford these days?” Baz likes hearing about school, and it saves him from having to answer questions about his life in London.  
“Fine. Still quite magickal.”  
“What’s your favorite class?”  
“Alchemy.” He asks me this every year.  
“Mordelia, why don’t you tell Basil about your latest exploits in Alchemy?” Father breaks in. “I think he would find them amusing.”  
“You mean the throat tonic I made?” I don’t want to tell Baz about the brewing. Simon never judges, but Baz always does.  
“I mean the infraction that got you kicked off of the football team.”  
“You got booted?” asks Baz, astonished. This was probably Father’s plan. Make someone else do the work of being disappointed, raising eyebrows and tapping fingers. It saves him so much trouble.  
“I made some fairy wine,” I mutter, staring at the table. Baz snorts.  
“Really? Did it catch fire when you added the wrong ingredients? That happened to a bloke I know.”  
I raise my eyebrows right back at him.  
“I didn’t make a mistake. I was caught when some rats got tipsy.”  
Now both Simon and Baz are laughing.  
“Good thing she wasn’t around when you were there,” says Simon. “Drunk rats would’ve been a bit of a problem.”  
Everyone at the table pauses and stares at Baz, waiting for the row that breaks out about half the times anyone brings up his vampirism, especially his rat-sucking past. He simply laughs, and the tension diffuses for a moment.  
Father clears his throat. “I believe you have been sufficiently punished for this infraction. You need to be on the straight and narrow if you want to play football again.”  
I just nod.  
“In addition, I want you to concentrate on your studies. Your grades are positively mediocre in most subjects.”  
“Yes, Father.” Sometimes I could curse Baz for setting the bar so high. Him and his perfect pronunciation in three languages.  
“If your grades don’t improve by the end of term, we will take further measures. Perhaps cutting back on music to make more time to study?”  
I break composure for just a second, my mouth screwing up before I can press it back into a thin line.  
“I’ll work harder. I would hate to have to give up the flute.”  
He knows how much I would hate it. Sometimes I would rather give up my voice.

After dinner I shower, and then head to the library, my hair dripping. I want some new flute music. The library at Watford is shit for sheet music, the only songs available are ones with magically significant lyrics. I need to get enough to last me through the rest of term.  
Baz walks into the library as I shuffle through a stack of Mozart. He goes straight to the shelf next to me, where we keep his old scores. He opts for angry, mournful music whenever he’s home. I’ve seen his collection in London; it’s far more cheerful. Even showtunes.  
“Can’t believe you have much time to practice,” says Baz, raising an eyebrow.  
“What? I play all the time.”  
“I should think that your criminal hobby should take a chunk out of your day. What with all the gathering herbs at midnight.”  
“Um. No, not really.”  
I usually can get someone else to gather the ingredients for me. Being queen of a black market has its advantages.  
“Funny, seeing as you seem to not have time for your school work.”  
“Penn and Teller, Baz, not you too.”  
“Grades are important.” Baz is smirking. He likes this, being the one doing the chiding.  
“I know that. And mine aren’t bad. Not all of us can be at the top of the class.”  
“If I made those grades after being kidnapped by fucking numpties, you can too.”  
“C’mon Baz, that was your last year. What was stopping you the other seven?”  
“Oh, just a little matter of sucking blood.” Damn, damn, damn. I should not have gone there. Baz’s past always gets much darker than I’m prepared for, much faster than I’m prepared for.  
“Baz, it’s just… I don’t have your brains or your magic. Or a war looming in the background.”  
“The war did not help.” He’s still smiling. The bastard.  
“It must have… motivated you.”  
“Took half my bloody time. Always off thwarting evil.”  
“You weren’t ‘thwarting evil.’ You were antagonizing Simon to please the Families.”  
“Really, Mordelia. Don’t try to be clever about things you don’t understand.”  
Baz is never going to budge an inch. I storm past him, clutching my music to my chest. The Immature One.

I play the flute in the closet. It’s a habit I developed as a kid, when people were always arguing and Mother had her headaches. That’s when I got really good at it, alone in a tiny room filled with music. It was like being inside my own head. I can’t fit as well anymore, but it’s okay since most of my clothes are at Watford.  
I clatter out of the closet when I hear knocking at the door. My younger sisters sometimes come up to talk to me before bed. Simon is waiting for me on the other side of the door, holding two bowls of ice cream.  
“Cookies and cream, that’s your favorite, right?”  
“Um, yeah. Thanks.”  
I take the bowl and motion for him to come in. Simon and I aren’t usually on midnight snack terms, but of course he knows my ice cream flavor. Baz always says that food is Simon’s preoccupation.  
“So, what brings you to my room?”  
He looks down into his strawberry ice cream.  
“I know Baz can get pretty shirty when he get’s stressed.”  
“What does he have to be stressed about? No one is threatening to take his violin away. His brother wasn’t being a condescending git.”  
“Apparently someone was making jokes about the fall of the House of Pitch at the garden party,” Simon shifts to rub his neck as he continues. “Seeing as the heir is living with a bloke and all.”  
Oh dear. No wonder he was attacking me.  
“I’ll give you lot my first illegitimate child to raise as a Pitch. Clearly that’s where my life of crime is leading.”  
He laughs and pats my knee. “I don’t think we need to worry about that yet. How about giving me a couple bottles of that fairy wine?”  
I give Simon all the bottles that I had hidden in the bottom of my bag, wrapped in clothes. All of my best stuff was confiscated. They’re probably reverse-engineering the mixture to figure out how many rules I broke in acquiring the ingredients.  
“You know,” says Simon, “This might end the tension between you and Baz. He likes a good drink.”  
“Sure it will.”  
“You better patch things up by Saturday. We don’t want any rows at Penny’s engagement party.”  
I’m still miffed at my brother, but I’ll be civil to him as long as he’s civil to me. Not for his sake, of course. We’ll both be polite just to please Simon.

The first time I saw Simon was on Christmas Eve when I was eight. He was stammering and infatuated and terrified, and he exuded so much magic it made me dizzy. It was easy to hate him, the way I knew the Families would want, but I could also see why my brother treated him like the sun. That was before I knew anything about love or romance. Just magic.  
I would have followed Simon around if I could’ve, but I stuck to lurking and listening and straining to feel the magic. I felt him go off that morning in the woods, which is why I was awake to see him rise up on his red wings, like some kind of angel. (Magicians don’t believe in angels).  
It was all I dreamed about for two years, Simon flying away from the forest and the horrible, desolate feeling of a house with no magic. I don’t remember all that much of what happened next, but the next time I saw Simon, he was empty of any magic and had a pair of flightless wings. Baz held his hand all the time.  
I got used to him, and then I started to like him, unlike certain other members of my family. He would read to me, and show me good shows on the television. Simon shortened my name to Delia, because “Mordelia is a bloody horrifying name for a child. Nearly as bad as Tyrannous.”  
Of course, Father still calls me by my real name. He didn’t think Simon was a good person for Baz to be around, much less us “impressionable children.” There were always enormous rows before he came to visit, cumulating in the one that made Baz avoid coming home for over a year.  
I put an end to his absence myself on my thirteenth birthday, when I ran away from the nice London shopping trip Mother planned. I spent four hours waiting outside of Baz’s flat for him to come back. Mother called Baz in desperation when she couldn’t find me, and he told Simon, who thought to look for me at the flat. They found me on his fire escape, eating some oranges I had stashed in my bag and reading a book about Joan of Arc.  
Once I had been hugged and punished, Father shook Simon’s hand and thanked him, icily, for finding his daughter. Baz’s mouth twitched at that, because he knew Father couldn’t object to Simon staying at our house anymore.  
Simon visited me while I was grounded and told me, with those odd blocks in his sentences that he gets sometimes, that what I had done was heroic. Braving the chaos of Normal London, including the Tube, to bring my brother back was worthy of Joan of Arc. I was the happiest I had ever been. Simon Snow had fought dragons, and he was calling me brave.  
I consider my Great Escape to be the end of Baz’s conflict with Father, and the beginning of mine, but Baz says that’s tosh.  
As expected, Baz and I are perfectly nice to each other next time we meet. Actually, I’m not sure if he even remembers the argument. He probably considers it reasonable academic encouragement. We spend four hours in the library together the Monday after the garden party. I study up on my Greek and some Shakespeare, and he is highlighting several tomes, hopefully relating to his work. I can’t imagine spending so long in the dust of old words and spells totally voluntarily.  
Simon storms in the library with sandwiches and hovers over us as we eat them, finishing Baz’s crisps.  
“C’mon, you two. It’s a beautiful day. Let’s play football with the little ‘uns.”  
Baz looks over at me and shrugs. I put my book down, and we follow Simon down the stairs.  
Simon and I play against Baz and the twins. Mimi and Bear (don’t let them hear you call them Mignonette and Ursula) are in their second year at Watford. Baz is loads better than the rest of us, so it ends up being a fair fight.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An engagement party for Penelope!  
> These speeches are very self-indulgent.

There is a big party in London two nights before I’m due back at school. Penelope Bunce is celebrating her engagement, and half of the World of Mages seems to have turned up. Baz is shocked at the number of people.  
“I thought the Bunces didn’t go in for friendship?”  
“Keep in mind how many Bunces there are,” Simon points out. “A few friends each really add up.”  
I like Penny quite a lot, though I don’t think she’s ever paid much attention to me. She sometimes visits with Simon, and then spends the whole time cooped up in the library with my brother, Simon bringing them snacks. She and Baz are on half a dozen committees about improving the Mage World, not to mention their Normal jobs. I don’t know how she has time to get married.

The party is in some enormous rented hall, an ocean of white tables lit by hanging candles. Trellises line the walls, covered in flowers blooming out of season. Father comes up to me as I wander over to inspect them.  
“I hope that cup only has soda?”  
“Yes, sir.” Hopefully he’ll be paying less attention later tonight.  
“Good girl.” He inhales deeply from a spray of pink roses. “Why do you think they choose these flowers?” He’s testing me. He wants to see if I’ve retained any botany beyond what it takes to whip up a drink.  
“Hmmm. The spring blooms like these roses can be expected, since they’re in season. They might also give luck. Fertility, since it’s spring.”  
“And what about the other flowers?”  
“They’re all associated with love spells. I believe the scents have been enhanced, maybe to give a more romantic atmosphere? I don’t know why they bothered. It’s not like Penelope and Micah could fall any more in love.”  
Father smiles. “It used to be a tradition to have various pleasant scents at Mage gatherings, to ease tension. We did something similar at my first wedding.”  
He doesn’t usually mention Natasha. It always gives me a strange, apprehensive feeling. My family is the second choice, the second try. We’ll never be able to live up to her. He takes a deep inhale of one of the roses, obviously lost in thought. He barely glances up as I walk away, and doesn’t notice as I grab a glass of champagne from a floating tray. I hurry to a side room to drink it, Father’s threat to my flute fresh in my mind.  
I’m in some kind of lilac-colored chamber full of little chairs and couches- maybe to take fainting brides? I sink onto a sofa and inspect one of the needlepoint pillows. Home is where the Heart is. Baz would probably consider it a spell, not just a platitude to calm hysterical women. Or maybe it is a spell, and I’m reading too much into this pastel room. It’s not like anyone gets tricked into marriage anymore. I can’t imagine Penelope having any kind of fainting spell.  
I finish the drink but I don’t really want to go back into the big room, full of flowers and magicians and floating trays of appetizers. At least six people have already asked me about Watford, every one of them mentioning that school was the best days of their lives. I really, really hope that it gets better than this. This isn’t anything.  
Somehow I fall asleep in the lavender room, hugging the pillow to my chest. I wake up when a girl in a red dress stumbles into the room, followed closely by a man in a tuxedo. They sink into a plump armchair and begin to make out. No one notices me, and I don’t want to leave the room in case they do. I should really just lie back on the couch and close my eyes, pretend to be somewhere else. The girl has blond hair spread all over the back of the chair. Her freckles look really good with the cinnamon lipstick currently being smeared onto her boyfriend’s cheekbones.  
I am still watching and trying not to breathe when the door bangs open and another girl, around my age, dashes in, holding an enormous blue purse.  
“Premal, get your ass back to the party right now. Mum is trying to take pictures of all the men in the wedding.”  
The man groans and rolls out the chair. “Later, love,” he tells the blonde girl as she creeps out of the room. He glares at the girl who came in before heading back into the party.  
The girl, who I now realize is one of the younger Bunce siblings, sinks onto an ottoman and rubs her temples. She picks up a nearby throw pillow and frowns at it, and then begins looking around the room  
Oh no. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to breathe evenly. Maybe I should cast these aren’t the droids you’re looking for to escape.  
“Delia Grimm?”  
My eyes fly open, “Um, yeah.”  
“Sorry if I woke you. You just started breathing really strangely.”  
“It's, uh, allergies.”  
“I see.” She lies down on the ottoman. “Do you mind if I stay in here? Mum and Penny have been using me as an errand girl all week. I need a breather.”  
“No problem. Am I missing anything in the party?”  
“Our siblings and Simon are getting completely wasted.”  
“Hmm. Worth getting off of this couch for?”  
“Not for me. But I’m pretty over watching my sister’s life unfold.”  
I turn over to face her. “I know exactly what you mean. I’ve already had to watch Baz play croquet sloshed this week. And then he lectured me about academics.”  
“Having smart siblings is the worst. I don’t think Mum will ever be satisfied with me.”  
I wonder if Priya finds it easier to complain about her mother because Professor Bunce is the headmistress. It’s normal for students to complain about a harsh teacher, but I can’t imagine telling some girl at a party that Father is disappointed in me. I just always talk around it, like I’m casting an invisible spell.  
Priya turns out to be a good person to hide with during a party. Her gigantic purse houses, among other things, books, socks, a magic bracelet, and a bag of marshmallows snatched from the chocolate fountain.   
“So,” I ask, feeling relaxed from the effects of sugar and perhaps even the abundance of (spell-ridden?) pillows, “Got any plans for the summer?”  
“My parents normally ship me off to America to stay with some of Micah’s cousins. I really want to stay in London this year, though.”  
“Why? I’d love to get away. The farthest I’ve ever been was with some Pitches in France.”   
“Americans take magical classes in the summer, so it’s a lot like Watford.”  
“I see.” She fidgets with the marshmallows for a moment.  
“I was also seeing a girl over there, and things didn’t end well…”  
“Oh?” A girl?  
“I couldn’t make it work long distance. She cursed me with Frog in your throat over the phone. I couldn’t talk for two weeks.”  
“She must have been powerful,” I say, ignoring the elements of this story that are actually interesting to me. Such as the specifics of their relationship, and how she told her parents.  
“Oh yes. Far too much for me. Penny thinks I’m a bit of a failure, since she kept an American for four years apart.”  
“That’s unfair. Let’s make a pact to not compare ourselves to our siblings.”  
“Agreed.” She checks a thin gold watch. “We better get out there, it’s almost time for speeches. Thank Merlin I’m not making one.”  
The real wedding is going to be in America in two months, but Penelope’s friends and family are speaking at both the rehearsal dinner there and this party. Everyone who knows her agrees she deserves at least this much.  
I walk into the main room to find my normally composed brother standing on top of a table, tapping on a wineglass with his wand. He looks resplendent in a dark blue tuxedo with a lavender bowtie and cummerbund.   
“We are here tonight to celebrate the sensational Penelope Bunce and her fiancé, Micah Quintana, who must have been hit with as luck would have it early in life. How else can you explain meeting your soulmate at the age of 14, and never looking back?”  
Applause.  
“And what a woman Penelope is, and what a magician. He would be lucky to find a match at a third of her caliber. I reach for my wand, and she’s already cast the spell. I plan a nice dinner for my boyfriend, and find that she’s already thrown a surprise party.”  
Laughter. That really happened when Simon turned twenty-one.  
“I arrange a political meeting, and I find she’s already on her way to running the world. Everyone here knows how instrumental she was in creating the Junior Coven, an organization that is already trailblazing ways to make magical law fairer and more practical. I have drafted several bills with her, and her dedication to the World of Mages is a credit to our generation. She brings this dedication to every facet of her life, from her studies to her family to her friendships. Some might call this intensity warrior-like, and they would not be wrong: Bunce once told me that I should never care about more people than I can defend from a raging chimera. Fortunately for all of us, Penelope could probably protect this whole room, and I should know.  
“Her quick wits have quite literally saved my life once or twice. And she’s metaphorically saved it many, many more times. Penelope is one of the only people I can always talk to, who knows my mind as well as the halls of Watford. When the state of the world gets to be too much, when I’m ready to hurl my wand at the wall, she’s there, furious but cool-headed, with a plan to fix everything. And that’s what she does. She fixes the world, Magical and Normal, piece by piece. Everyone who has crossed paths with her can feel it. So, Micah, that’s what you’re signing up for. A life with a righteous, blazingly intelligent hurricane. I’m glad you’ve found her, and I’m glad you’re worthy.”  
Everyone jumps up to clap. Penny has her face buried in Micah’s jacket, crying. I see Simon wiping his face with his sleeve before he helps Baz down from the table. Two of Penelope’s siblings speak next, describing a sister like her as an inspiration and a curse. I suppose more will talk in America, if the whole clan spoke tonight we would be here until Midsummer.  
The last person to speak is Simon. The room falls silent when he stands up on the table, shuffling notes. Maybe some of them remember when he had legendary status, but tonight he’s just Penelope’s oldest friend.  
“I’ve been dreading this day since I first set eyes on Micah and realized he could be the one to take Penny away from all of us. Truthfully, I might follow her to America for the seasons they spend there. Can any of you blame me? She saved my life more than thirty times before we turned twenty. She’s stupidly brave, and it’s the only stupid thing about her. She became friends with me because of compassion and curiosity, despite the very obvious indicators that I was a walking catastrophe.   
“I don’t just love Penny as some sort of fairy godmother or life preserver. She is, and always will be, my best friend. She was the best thing about my life for many years, the human version of roast beef and scones and magic. During summer hols I had this list in my head of what I missed most about Watford. Penelope Bunce was the first person on it, the face of everything good in my life. She was the person who showed me how to hold a wand, who told me what happened to the fairies, who taught me that Clean as a whistle is not the same as a bath.” He laughs, along with the rest of the room.  
“Penny was the first person to love me for myself, not as a superhero or a charity case. She represents the most important thing about magic, the thing that seemed like such a miracle to me at eleven: the power of change. Magic taught me that words could change the world. Penelope Bunce teaches me everyday that people can.   
“Micah, I think you’re the only bloke in the world who Penelope doesn’t often want to turn into a frog, myself included. I wish you were crazy enough to want to live in Britain all the time. Penelope, I’m no good with words in any case, but there aren’t enough words in any language to describe what you mean to me. I just wish you all the luck in the seven heavens, and I can’t wait to watch the two of you change the world together.”  
The applause for Simon brings the house down. Penelope embraces him and Micah thumps him on the back. All of them are obviously crying. So am I, to tell the truth. I’m happy and sad and jealous of my brother’s enchanted circle. All the magic and beauty and love that come out on nights like these makes the rest of life seem dull. It’s the difference between casting a perfect spell and just reciting the same clichés, over and over again.


End file.
